[Mageia-dev] Support policy

Maarten Vanraes maarten.vanraes at gmail.com
Wed Dec 1 00:33:32 CET 2010


Op dinsdag 30 november 2010 13:31:08 schreef Samuel Verschelde:
> Hi,
> 
> I would like to discuss the support policy for Mageia.
> 
> It would be interesting to know (or decide) where Mageia is heading, given
> our limited resources : 1) focus on stability and security : few very well
> equally supported packages. Apparently, this is where we're going for now.
>  May be wise as a start, but I hope this is not our final destination,
> because it means either very limited choice, or progressive diminution of
> quality of support if the number of packages increases faster than the
> dedicated resources. 2) focus on choice : many packages, but no support
> policy. This would be really bad, I think we're not heading there, from
> what I read. However, this is a danger if we start from option 1) and then
> open wide the gates for importing packages, without setting a support
> policy. 3) focus on both (this is my option). There would be 2 levels of
> support : - top guaranteed support : those are the (few at start) packages
> your can rely on almost blindly, they'll be updated in a timely manner,
> and updates don't break things. Those are the packages the QA Team puts
> its limited resources on (doesn't mean the QA Team provides the support
> themselves, this is maintainer work, but they check that good support is
> provided) : testing, helping the maintainers to watch for security
> problems... The maintainers are responsible for their package, but the QA
> Team double-checks updates for stable releases. - supported packages
> (every other package) : those are maintained packages, however the QA Team
> doesn't have to check them. It's up to the maintainer to check the package
> and updates quality. - unsupported packages are dropped.
> 
> Are we heading for 1), 2), 3), or any other option ?
> 
> Of course, with unlimited resources, options 1 and 3 would be equivalent,
> everything would have the "top guaranteed support" :)
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Samuel Verschelde
> Packager/QA Team/User


having read misc's lenghty and almost political proposal, i suggest a 4th 
option (even though i'm not part of QAteam either):

4) dynamically distributed focus:
- level 1: BuildSystem-required packages (all packages used for buildnodes)
- level 2: everything that is minimally required to boot and do stuff
- level 3: popular server packages
- level 4: release focus (everything that's defaultly installed by a release)
- level 4b: stage images
- level 5: the rest

depending on resources and certain timings; focus should be spread according 
to desires at that time.

eg:
- i imagine that level 1 could be discussed between sysadm and qateam during 
BS-updates
- i imagine that level 2 would be the primary focus
- i imagine that level 4 could be more important during release times
- i imagine that level 5 would probably not be focussed by QA unless unlimited 
resources
- i imagine that level 3 would probably be good if resources would be growing, 
and possibly level 4 if there's enough resources.


- i agree that testing should be open to anyone
- i agree that karma could not be a bad idea, but suggest that QAteam give 
more karma (perhaps even on the karmic state of that person)
- i also would suggest that at the time of alpha release, we should do a 
contest on testing and bugfinding; so that we could gather enough testers; and 
possibly even extra packagers or qateam people.

WDYT?


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